Lourdes Gurriel was pulled from the game after making an ugly throwing error in today’s loss to Tampa Bay

That was a weird one, to the say the least. Neither Marcus Stroman or Charlie Morton made it beyond five innings but the Rays kicked the door down in the eighth inning and cruised to an 8-4 win.

Things worth mentioning…

As the title suggests, the most interesting development in today’s game was Lourdes Gurriel making a terrible throwing error at second base (his second game in a row with a throwing error) and subsequently getting pulled from the game the following inning. I don’t think Charlie Montoyo removed Gurriel from the game as a punishment. You could see Gurriel wearing the frustration after he made that error. His body language showed a player with lost confidence. I imagine the play here was to get him out of the game before he had a chance to dig himself further into the hole he’s in. You have to wonder if Gurriel could use some time at Triple-A Buffalo to regain confidence, especially given the Jays need to remove someone from the 25-man roster to make room for Vlad Jr. eventually.

That error by Gurriel resulted in Marcus Stroman having to throw 15 more pitches in the third inning, which plated a role in his afternoon coming to an end early. As I alluded to in the other post today, Stroman didn’t look like himself on the mound against the Rays. He was more solemn and low-energy than we’re used to seeing and he struggled with his command. Stroman went four innings, allowing three runs, none earned, on three hits and four walks.

Thomas Pannone came into the game after Stroman and pitched ridiculously well. Pannone tossed an immaculate inning (three strikeouts on nine pitches) and went three perfect frames with four strikeouts. In doing so, Pannone became just the third Blue Jay ever to throw an immaculate inning.

On the opposite side of that was Tim Mayza, who got completely caved in by the Rays in a key eighth inning. Mayza came in after Javy Guerra allowed to Rays to reach while recording just one out. Mayza would go on to allow both of Guerra’s runners to score along with three of his own runs. All told, Mayza allowed four hits and a walk while recording just one out. That’s ugly.

It’s not as bad as you might think. In five of his last six outings, he hasn’t allowed a baserunner, and has struck out 8. That other outing in that stretch, though, was the awful outing against the Rays. (And it’s fair to remember that two of those “good” outings were one batter.) Of course, he looked a bit shaky a couple of times prior to this six game stretch, so are those five decent outings indicative of what we can expect, or is he going to be prone to blowups?